18 Comments

I have to wonder what those Princeton shits who are complaining are thinking, "Egad! A self-made man? Who actually put in physical labor? From a public school? And black? We have nothing in common with him!"

Lack of input complaint is bullshit - I bet the committee in charge of the senior day or whatever got together in August-September, asked for help or ideas back in October-November, heard back from very little, had to work their assess off to beg people to come speak (and most of those probably said no when they realized it wasn't even the commencement speech), and had to get everything set up in January-February so they can have a plan B set up in case something goes wrong before graduation in May.

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He's a good out of the box choice rather than a successful wall street alum or tech person. Worrying about who was going to be the speaker on student day for months is a bit ridiculous

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So I read the complaint, and it seems like they're complaining more about not having input - rather than Money in specific - HOWEVER - I was on the Cal Senior Class committee, and only the 15 people that volunteered and interviewed and chosen and HAD TO DO ALL THE WORK ALL YEAR for the graduation speaker were part of the speaker choice. Let me tell you, it's not just as simple as "Here's a list: let's get Michelle Obama!" - you have a big wishlist, then you need to start contacting people and arranging schedules and it was a process from fall semester all the way to May to get the speaker lined-up. If you're not joining the committee in the fall, then it's hard to just get a voice in the end - it was a lot of work that we spent 2-5 hours a week in meetings (yeah, there was plenty of other stuff too - but grad speaker was brought up in almost every single meeting that year). It's never just as easy as "we want speaker A" . . . and Marshawn is a good get.

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They don't deserve him.

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I'm just happy to be able to comment here.

That was a comment meant to be in the spirit of Mr. Lynch.

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The semicolon is 100% appropriate there. The em dash is the punctuation of the lazy and is rarely used as originally intended, to set off an abrupt change of thought.

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I think it's a bit of an oversell that "the students" at Princeton sought to question Lynch's invitation. "Some students" at Princeton sought to question Lynch's invitation is much more accurate. That four had the courage to sign the letter is well and good. That there were anonymous signers smacks of either a) a Silent Majority or b) folks who were unfamiliar with the concept of standing up for your convictions.

And yes, it does have racial overtones. I don't know how one could get away from that in digesting the reasoning in the open letter and the assertion that the process was opaque and the Selection Committee was not broad enough (there wasn't enough diversity! Oh! the irony!)

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big fan of the em dash

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I wrote a comment earlier this morning on this thread that was in response to the original subtitle of the thread, which was "is it possible to whiter and more uptight than this?". I asked why the subtitle suggested this was a race issue, which it does not seem to be at all.

I come back this afternoon and notice that my comment has been deleted and the subtitle changed. While I appreciate the subtitle change, I don't understand why my comment was deleted.

Is this an example of how this new website will be policed? My comment was not meant to be inflammatory yet I can only assume it was in order for it to be removed.

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